Show off your awesome KSP pictures!

[Deadweasel]

Sweet! You could automate a bunch of this in a plugin, notably stripping out terrain and other extraneous meshes, or fixing the transforms to get rid of that skew you're suffering from. Spitting out an SVG top-view would be easy as well. And, why not, making a guess at takeoff speed and so on. The only thing you'd need to do is click a button, then load the obj and smooth the curves.

That reminds me I'd offered to spit out a vessel STL for someone a while back... I should get back to it.

Heh, the skew is a result of the conversion to the .obj format during the capture process. Otherwise it also produces another format that works just fine, except that it requires an additional plugin to be installed for older versions of 3DS Max for import. The problem there is that I don't have an older version, and Autodesk can't seem to settle down and stop completely re-hashing their scripting system with every major release, so I settle for the little extra work this track creates.

Unfortunately, I can't really script the correction process (easily), because I'm not familiar with coding Sketchup plugins. Also, this is the only time I ever have to worry about correcting deformations created from outside the environment, so it really wouldn't be worth the time it would take to learn the language and make a plugin to address it. Developing the process did lead me to discover some really cool tools that I didn't realize existed before though. Sketchup has been lacking any kind of ability to influence a model's linear deformation as a whole, but some crazy Russian guy went ahead and figured it out, creating a tool that makes short work of the needed adjustments, and does it in a very intuitive way.

For the most part, all I need to get a model fixed is a couple of reliable points of reference. Usually what I'll do is stick a couple of docking port jrs at right angles on the ship before capture, then all I have to do is squish, squash and slant until those ports are properly circular again. Easy-peasy!

Now I just wish there was a way to detect and delete duplicate groups that are overlaid on one another without having to "explode" the whole model and make it one singular mesh. Currently they come through with each part "grouped" as its own component, which is great for the smoothing stage, as some parts' geometries need more or less than others.

As for exporting .svg... ooooh that would be nice, but I can't work very well in Illustrator, and Photoshop would just rasterize the things anyway. PNG export with transparency is a (plugin-provided) godsend enough as it is though.

[Giggleplex777]

Another successful shuttle mission!

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[Bunzmaster]

Another successful shuttle mission!

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Awesome! Very nice.

The very first thing I ever tried building in KSP was a Shuttle, but It would be unstable and kept pitching over. I need to try again.

[nhnifong]

Sending my 10th attempt at an ion-plane based Eve ascent vehicle.

[Danish_Savage]

Snip of awesome.

Can we have look at the windjammer too? It looks awesome.

[Sugoi]

I got my action groups wrong, as you can see from the seperatron that didn't light. Looks cool though.

[Deadweasel]

Can we have look at the windjammer too? It looks awesome.

Of course!

It's a departure from the rest of the series, in that it has a real pilot (hence the MACT designation), but it feels like a Learjet!

[Danish_Savage]

Of course!

It's a departure from the rest of the series, in that it has a real pilot (hence the MACT designation), but it feels like a Learjet!

What I meant was actual pics of a mission, but thanks anyway

[kookoo_gr]

Lesson of the day. Don't let Ike drink....ever.

At least the trajectory is on the same plane as Duna.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Thanks! It looks fine on my screen, but if it looks broken for you thats probably not a good sign - will go back to using Gyazo

Strange, they don't work in chrome, but work fine in firefox. Chrome gives a completely different URL for the image than firefox does.

[SuperWeegee4000]

Fixed it for you. Postimage is weird in the way it links stuff; I think they intentionally make it hard to direct link to images there.

No it's not. All you have to do is copy the direct link into the "Insert Image" popup. It's the simplest thing in the world.

Strange, they don't work in chrome, but work fine in firefox. Chrome gives a completely different URL for the image than firefox does.

I usually use IE, and it works fine there. Must be something with Chrome.

Edited December 4, 2013 by SuperWeegee4000

[kookoo_gr]

I swear Ike is drunk but you can't have it any other way but to like Ike I landed at Ike took my crew out and then switched to orbital camera. This is the result.

[Tw1]

I landed at Ike took my crew out and then switched to orbital camera.

That's a cool photo. Yeah, orbital veiw does that. Going for a walk that way is amusing.

Someone left a horse head at the old airfield. Should I be worried?

Oh wait, that was me. They should be worried.

Also:

Fully operational Santa sleigh!

Quite epic.

Made it to reenact a song.

[Guest]

This game can be so peacefully beautiful, it's easy to forget about your next manoeuvre...

[SuperWeegee4000]

This game can be so peacefully beautiful, it's easy to forget about your next maneuvre...

Is the Apollo CM in the American Pack, or is it a separate mod? I've always been curious about it.

[Guest]

Is the Apollo CM in the American Pack, or is it a separate mod? I've always been curious about it.

Separate mods, actually. The CM is Ledenko's Apollo-like crew module, the decoupler and SM are SuperNovy's, RCS pods and SM engine from KW Rocketry, the running lights from Bac9, and the high-gain antenna from Telemachus.

I'll add this latest one right here...

Edited December 4, 2013 by Jack Wolfe

[Deadweasel]

What I meant was actual pics of a mission, but thanks anyway

Oh. Well for that, I'll need to get more pics on the next test flight. I'll be sure to share them up once I've got the design refined better.

[3mon]

Just built this bad boy with the intention of bringing it up and docking to my station.... but the editor seems to hate me, and breaks when i try to move it or add more pieces... It doesnt crash, but the pieces stick to my cursor and all the buttons are rendered useless, and I have to task manager out of KSP.

I dont know, its 559 parts, i have built aberrations with more parts with no problems (in the editor ). But i wont surrender!

[Jon Tash]

Ahead full!!!

[Deadweasel]

Commenced with a little re-tooling of the MACT-101, resulting in the MACT-101/EC Windjammer!

Now features a pressurized cabin (which reduces part count, and trades six seats for four).

Turns like an absolute pig, but screams in the straightaway like a stabbed rat.

Looks pretty, and still flies well enough to commit nice soft landings

[Logan.Darklighter]

Commenced with a little re-tooling of the MACT-101, resulting in the MACT-101/EC Windjammer!

Now features a pressurized cabin (which reduces part count, and trades six seats for four).

These are gorgeous planes, DW. But I tried using the one you posted the craft file for and I can't get it off the runway. No matter what I do, it runs out of fuel halfway down. I do wish those nice curved sections of hull and the fore and aft tapered ones could be actual fuel tanks. I don't really like the "cheat" of using the fuel generators. And they don't seem to make enough fuel fast enough anyway. Or I'm doing something wrong.

Still - gorgeous designs!

[Deadweasel]

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<tbody>[TR]

[TD]

These are gorgeous planes, DW. But I tried using the one you posted the craft file for and I can't get it off the runway. No matter what I do, it runs out of fuel halfway down. I do wish those nice curved sections of hull and the fore and aft tapered ones could be actual fuel tanks. I don't really like the "cheat" of using the fuel generators. And they don't seem to make enough fuel fast enough anyway. Or I'm doing something wrong.

Still - gorgeous designs!

....oh hell. *headdesk*

So you just made me realize something I had totally forgotten, which calls the entire A/MACT line of these planes into question. I have a seperately-modified version of those fuel generators that produce fuel at a slightly faster rate than stock. I didn't realize that those config differences weren't translated to the .craft files themselves, which means unless you also have the modified versions of the generators in your parts installs, you won't be able to fly these things at all.

So... I went back and played around with the configs for the wings to get them to carry fuel like real world aircraft do. Know what I discovered? It works. The only issue is that while their configs ostensibly allow for fuel-passthrough, they can't act as a fuel source. Why? Because Unity, I guess. The way around it is to just slap a fuel line from the wing to another body part that can transfer fuel, and by George Takei, it works.

I need to play around more with some of this, especially where the pWings are concerned. There needs to be separate versions of them for straight structural use (like the wingtip vertical stabilizers on Windjammer), and one that scales the fuel content with the size of the wing, probably based on the surface area calculations for it.

The same modification could be done for other parts that honestly should have fuel capability, like those engine nacelles. I mean, they weigh little enough that it could be assumed they're hollow anyway, right?

In the meantime, the quickest way around this pickle is to modify the FuelTastic50L part, and slightly bump up the rates under OUTPUT_RESOURCE in its config. Leave the power requirement alone, and if you tweak just a bit, you can get it to extend the flight time to a more realistic range while not allowing for infinite flight, by generating fuel just a teensy hair slower than the engines consume it.

Thanks for the call-out Logan; it helped to have outside input on this for sure! I've got a lot more test flights to run now, to see if adding fuel to all the relevant wings has any kind of detrimental effects.[/TD]

[/TR]

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[Monkeh]

[Guest]

Mercury-Atlas 4, 9 1/2 hours into its flight.

[Free Trader Beowulf]

Found a rock. Sweet.